Evaluating Model Precision and Future Data Directions for Bankruptcy Prediction

Written by angelinvest | Published 2025/10/21
Tech Story Tags: automated-machine-learning | automl-for-financial-analysis | predictive-modeling | financial-risk-assessment | investment-grade-bonds | fallen-angel-bonds | feature-selection-in-finance | bankruptcy-prediction-models

TLDRAutoML emerges as a scalable, cost‑efficient approach to streamline financial forecasting across modern investment analytics. via the TL;DR App

Authors:

(1) Harrison Mateika, Northwestern University ([email protected]);

(2) Juannan Jia, Northwestern University ([email protected]);

(3) Linda Lillard, Northwestern University ([email protected]);

(4) Noah Cronbaugh, Northwestern University ([email protected]);

(5) Will Shin, Northwestern University ([email protected]).

  1. Introduction
  2. Literature Review
  3. Data Collection
  4. Data Analysis
  5. Methodology
  6. Results
  7. Analysis and Interpretation
  8. Conclusions and Next Steps, and References

7. Analysis and Interpretation

Due to the complicating factors regarding bankruptcy, it is very unlikely that a model will be generated that will be able to accurately predict all bankruptcies. However, the high precision value that the AutoML model generated gives us hope that an accurate model can be created.

8. Conclusions and Next Steps

We recommend more bankruptcy data be collected, particularly more recent data. Furthermore, AutoML may be a more cost -saving method of modeling. It allows users to implement machine learning processes with greater ease than running different models with associated parameters manually.

The AutoML process is fairly simple: upload the CSV data or connect to a BigQuery table, pick a target column for prediction, select a metric to optimize, and select an amount of training hours to run the model .

The 2020 -2021 COVID pandemic had an unseen impact on the fallen -angel bond market. Credit rating agencies have downgraded many companies that were deemed at risk of being unable to repay investors when their bonds mature. By the end of 2020, the fallen -angel universe more than doubled compared to pre -pandemic. Many of these bonds have outperformed the overall high - yield market and investment -grade bonds in the last decade. Buying fallen -angel bonds in the clients ’ portfolios can yield a significant return when these companies improve their finances and upgrade back to investment grade. When this occurs, the prices will spike when these bonds are again eligible for investment in the investment group portfolios. In the first half of 2022, about $69 billion of high -yield bonds were upgraded to investment grade (Veraa, 2022).

This information above represents a great opportunity to take the research to the next level. By collecting the data on these fallen angel bonds, we would be able to gain a higher set of data regarding companies that go bankrupt than ever before. This should be an area to direct the next data science team toward regarding data collection.

References

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Altman, Edward I. (1968). Financial ratios, discriminant analysis and the prediction corporate bankruptcy. Journal of Finance, 23(4), 589–609.

Altman, Edward I. and Gabriele Sabato, 2008. “Modelling credit risk for SMEs: evidence from the U.S. market.” Abacus, 43 (43) (2007), pp. 332-357. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6281.2007.00234.x.

Brownlee, Jason, 2020. “SMOTE for Imbalanced Classification with Python.” Machine Learning Mastery. https://machinelearningmastery.com/smote-oversampling-for-imbalanced-classification/.

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Devatha, Vikram, 2019. “Predicting bankruptcy using Machine Learning | by Vikram Devatha.” Towards Data Science. https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-bankruptcy-f4611afe8d2c

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Liang, Deron, Chia-Chi Lu, Chih-Fong Tsai, and Guan-An Shih, 2016. “Financial Ratios and Corporate Governance Indicators in Bankruptcy Prediction A Comprehensive Study.” European Journal of Operational Research 252 (2016) 561- 572. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716000412

Menon, Kartik, 2022. “Feature Selection In Machine Learning.” Simplilearn. https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/machine-learning-tutorial/feature-selection-in-machine-learning.

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Veraa, Karen, 2022. “Why bond investors may find sanctuary in ‘fallen angels.’” iShares. https://www.ishares.com/us/insights/bonds-fallen-angels-investment.

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This paper is available on arxiv under CC by 4.0 Deed (Attribution 4.0 International) license.


Written by angelinvest | Empowering visionary entrepreneurs, fueling innovation, and cultivating a brighter future through strategic investments.
Published by HackerNoon on 2025/10/21